Top 10 Everyday Ways To Save Money

Do you feel nervous waiting for the ATM to print out your account balance? Do you find yourself often gazing into an empty wallet, confused? You don't have to be a financial analyst to keep yourself from spending money like a dunce. I've come up with ten simple, everyday things you can do to put an end to living from paycheck to paycheck.

10- Resist eating out It's tempting to let someone else do the cooking for you, especially when you've just come home from a full day of working. Ordering in or eating out may seem like a way to make your life easier, but it's an expensive means of doing so. Taking the extra half-hour at night to make your own dinner, or the extra ten minutes to prepare lunch for the next day, may save you a host of worries when it comes time to pay the bills. If you feel a bit in the dark when it comes to cuisine, well hey, we can help you with that too. Keep in mind that knowing how to whip up a tasty dish impresses the ladies in the process.

Cash saved: If you're dropping $6 daily on a sandwich and salad from the cafe in the lobby, slapping some meat and cheese on a bun the night before instead is going to save you $30 a week. If you're ordering out a couple of nights a week on top of that, at $10 a dish, you're looking at a total of $220 monthly that could be slashed from your budget.

9- Avoid brand names We're not just talking Polo shirts here. If you think about what you routinely buy, more often than not you'll find that you could be buying a generic version, and the only difference would be the price (and perhaps less attractive packaging). When you're grocery shopping, go for the store brands — it really doesn't matter who makes the aluminum foil or toilet paper you use. The same rule goes for pharmaceuticals, where you can save yourself a fortune if you stick to the no-names. Oftentimes, the only difference between brand names and generics is the price. Next time you're at the pharmacy, compare a Tylenol label with that of a generic acetaminophen: you'll see that even though the Tylenol is a few bucks more, the ingredients and dosage are identical.

Cash saved: A box of 100 Tylenol PM Extra Strength caplets retails for around $12. One generic equivalent is the CVS pharmacy brand, which although equal in quantity and chemical constituents, is more than 25% cheaper. Now, saving nine dollars over three annual acetaminophen purchases seems trivial, but if you extend this philosophy to the rest of your buying habits, you could avoid blowing up to hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.

8- Kick expensive habits If you're a smoker, you're probably coughing up a big wad of cash every month for something you shouldn't be doing in the first place. If your addiction lies elsewhere, your problems may be way beyond the reach of this particular article. This tip's a no-brainer: if you have an expensive habit, saving money is probably just one of the many reasons to drop it.

Cash saved: Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, at $5 a pack, works out to a monthly investment of $160. Not to mention, you're slowly killing yourself. You do the math.

7- Don't spend when you're drunk The sight of an empty wallet is frequently accompanied by a pounding headache and blurred memories of acting like a jackass. The bottle can make a man do foolish things: picking fights with strangers over their haircuts, laying terrible lines on girls, buying rounds of shots for the table you met ten minutes earlier. So take out some insurance before you pull your Saturday night Jekyll and Hyde routine. Bring a reasonable amount of cash with you to the bar, and leave your bank and credit cards at home. Once you're broke, it's probably time to crash anyway.

Cash saved: If you're prone to buying the crew a round of $3 shots at the end of the night, that's an additional $30 spent per weekend. The amount hinges, of course, on how popular one is. We're assuming that the average AskMen reader is escorted by at least five members of the Norwegian bikini team on a nightly basis.

6- Avoid prepayment plans There's a reason why the cable company is always trying to push you into prepayment plans. Authorizing your creditors to dip directly into your bank account is essentially condemning yourself to financial ignorance. It's easy to throw a statement away if the balance has already been paid off, but doing so involves overlooking all the little extra fees and rate changes that may pop up. Take the time to examine your bills thoroughly before submitting your payment, and be conscious of where your money is going.

Cash saved: In 2001, Americans paid $2.2 billion dollars in ATM fees . Eliminating monthly fees from your budget, whether it be by negotiating or switching service providers, can save you around $50-$70 every month.